Ghosts Of Monte Bellos Past -or- The Archeological Find Of The Century!

There has been a bit of “country” renovating going on up here at Monte Bello, and this has involved the occasional churning up of dirt — lo and behold, can you believe what the gentlemen doing this hard but necessary work dug up from the earth today? What long-held mystery was induced to offer up its first and only clue? What low voice from the past found a mellifluous moment in its throat and raised a tone that we could hear here, up above?

It was an amazing find, the sort that sends the jumping electric tingle along the cobblestones of your spine, raises taut bumps up on your arms, gets your scalp to tighten and tingle, ties a highwayman’s hitch up in your stomach, raises a faint sweat line across your upper lip, makes you draw a breath in wonderment, whistling a tune unnamed or known…

My imagination runs away; I see sunny days, laughing couples, I hear the clink of half-full glasses, the sounds of popping corks … Or is it early winter, gray streaks in the sky, a faint mist hovering low? Determined, a small band of warmly dressed companions refuses the invitation to the warmth and light of the tasting room, preferring instead to feel the elements, the way a motorcyclist understands Highway 1 in ways a car driver never will … they huddle outside, fingers almost too stiff to work the auger deep into the solid husk of cork separating their chapping lips from the glorious liquid inside …

I like to think it was raining, small beads of moisture nestling into the augur’s austere coils…

Oh earth, what more secrets do you keep? Can you tell us who was last to use this offering from your altar to our memory? I know we’ll never know, yet we never knew you held this little artifact of time, not until the workers turned the proper turn of soil; and there it was …